Hercules Bewitched
by Thor2000
Summary: Hercules is zapped to the Twentieth Century by Samantha Stephens and meets a descendant of Callisto’s family. The bad news: she has romantic aspirations with him.


CHAPTER ONE

Another day, another fight, it was all running into one routine. Iolaus ducked as another Hindu demon dropped out of the tree and landed on its brother demon. He grabbed the cudgel stick one of them had dropped and beamed one across the head, tripped two more and knocked the head off another one. These things were actually pretty disgusting. They hissed and smelled of brimstone, but they also fell apart like decomposing zombies.

"Hercules, watch my back!" Iolaus ducked another attack.

"Gotcha!" The son of Zeus smashed them together and piled the remains as if they were cordwood. There were still a hundred of the creatures going wild through Poteideia and Xena and Gabrielle were still nowhere in sight. He cleared a path for his buddy to slash a rope holding the barrels from rolling through the marketplace then jumped out of the way. The smell of brimstone filled the air as several of the demons were squashed under Corinthian pine and Argive steel. A few more charged for the heroes.

"Hercules," Iolaus gasped for breath. "What are these things called again?"

"Rakshasas." Hercules smashed and kicked a few.

"Really," Iolaus swung down from the rafters and sent several of the Eastern demons flying. "Next time tell the Hindu Gods to fight their own battles!" He ran to the defense of a small girl being carried off. Before the demon could take wing, he distracted it.

"Hey look! Air!" He punched it so hard its head flew off. He took the child and returned her to her mother as more villagers equipped with weapons leapt to the battle. He looked to Hercules being pummeled by twenty of the things at once. They pushed him to the ground harder and harder. What better reward than to kill the son of Zeus? Wrong. All twenty of them went flying and crashing to earth as Hercules got his wind. He swung out hard and fast! His vision blurred as he swung round and then came to rest as he stopped turned completely around not in the marketplace but in a new place. The scene changed for the would-be god. In less than a second, he had felt he was flying through time and space, and now he was in doors, but where? He had never seen any location remotely like this place, not even Olympus itself. Wooden cabinets and polished marble-like counters, metal sinks and iron objects he had never seen before lined up neatly along the walls. Two strange children sat at a table as their grandmotherly guardian looked up out of shock in his presence and tried forming words. She seemed as surprised to see him as he was to be in their presence. Speechless, she looked around and headed through a door leaving him behind. Hercules' breath was still racing as he realized he had been transported elsewhere from the battle, but where?

"Hi," Hercules cleared his throat and looked to the dark-haired buy with two big blue eyes. The girl was eight and had short blonde hair. Their clothing was nothing he'd seen before.

"Where am I?" He asked them. He heard voices as the old woman returned.

"Aunt Clara, what did you zap up now... oh my stars!" She was tall, blonde and attractive. She was as surprised as he was as the older woman tried to form a sentence, but then tried looking around inconspicuously guilty.

"Who are you?" Samantha Stephens asked.

"Hercules." The son of Zeus answered honestly.

The answer got an even more shocked response.

"Aunt Clara! You zapped up Hercules!" She turned to her aunt. "You have to put him back!"

"Of course I will," Clara stuttered. "As soon as I remember the spell!"

"I sort of get the feeling…" Hercules looked round these odd surroundings. "This wasn't planned."

CHAPTER TWO

"Let me get this straight." Hercules sat at the table as his beautiful hostess gave him something to eat. "This is the Twentieth Century which means I'm probably at least two thousand years into the future."

"Correct."

"And you can't send me back," Hercules grinned. "Because it's your Aunt Clara's spell."

"Right!"

"You witches have a lousy union." Hercules finished his sandwich as the two kids smiled at him. They had never met the son of a god before and they had heard a lot of stories about him from their mother.

"In the meantime," Samantha sat down. "You'll need Twentieth Century clothes to fit in..." She thought a minute and snapped his fingers. A short quasi-warp in reality allowed her to transmute his ancient attire into a t-shirt, jeans and boots to appear on Hercules. He smirked at the change.

"Binding..."

"You'll get used to it." She grinned warmly. "And you'll need a name... my husband will go..."

"Sam, I'm home!" A door opened and closed somewhere in this Twentieth Century structure.

"Great!" Samantha had a small coronary.

"Doesn't he know you're a witch?" Hercules asked.

"He knows," She added. "But he's developing this tic... I just hope he didn't bring..."

"Larry's here too!" Her husband called back.

"Great!" Samantha was developing her own nervous tic. She looked around for her aunt to return with the spell to return misplaced historical characters.

"Another thing," Hercules stopped her. "When your aunt sends me back, do I return to the exact same moment? Or the same amount of time later?"

"That's a very good question…" Samantha acted really stressed. "Just let me think about an answer…" She quickly put on a smile and joined her husband by the liquor table. She gave him a peck on the cheek as she noticed Larry.

"Hi, Larry," She tried to act as if nothing was wrong. "Come for another free meal?"

"That," Larry admitted. "And to help pitch ideas."

"Bradbury hated our ideas." Darren Stephens worried as he downed his drink. "We have to come up for another angle to sell her bar-bells to women."

"Well, if you two have work..." Samantha began pushing them toward the direction of her husband's study as Hercules came out of the kitchen with Adam on his shoulders. Tabitha skipped ahead of them on their way to the backyard.

"I promised to play with them." The big Boy Scout admitted as Darren and Larry eyed the huge muscular longhaired powerhouse. He could have been a hippie, but not in those clothes. Larry grinned as he assumed Samantha was fooling around behind Darren's back.

"Who's that?" Darren asked.

"Who?" His wife acted familiarly distracted. "Oh, him, that's, um, Har...Harry. Harry Cleese, an old family friend..."

"Is he...?" Darren twitched his nose.

"Well…" Samantha tried to avoid that question.

"No," They didn't watch as Larry watched Hercules play with the kids. He seemed like a bit of a kid himself as he pushed Darren's kids on the swing. Larry sipped his drink as Darren and Samantha had another silent conversation.

"He's what!" Darren screamed as Larry headed out to talk to Samantha's friend. Stepping out of the way of Tabitha's swinging feet, he started up a conversation.

"Harry, can I call you Harry?"

"I've been called worse."

"How would you like to make a lot of money!"

"Depends..." Hercules barely looked back at him.

"I could make you a god."

"Been there, done that." Hercules barely responded as what mattered was making the kids happy.

"Larry," Darren and Samantha ran out. "What are you up to?"

"Don't you get it…" Larry's eyes always shone as he talked money. "He's the face to sell Bradbury Barbells!"

"How do we get ourselves into these things?" Samantha mumbled out loud.

"I feel like my life is a bad TV show…" Darren bemoaned like a harried Dick York.

"What's a barbell?" Hercules asked.

CHAPTER THREE

Samantha watched from a far as Hercules flexed and posed for the instructions given him. He had obviously never done this stuff before, but he trusted Samantha and she was obviously doing her best to ensure his return back to history.

"This is not getting me back home." He blinked as the modern day sorcerer flashed his box with the light at him. He didn't understand the concept of the camera, but he had never seen photos of himself before.

"Trust me," Sam stood out of camera range. "Caesar spent a week here. Cleopatra also visited. I got them you back and I'll get you back." She smiled attractively as her husband came up to her near the photo shoot. He seemed much more collected and calm.

"How's he doing?"

"Fine, fine..."

"You sure Ares isn't hovering around here?" Darren looked around spooked.

"Darren, don't say that name." Samantha became scared. "You never know."

There was a slight distraction as Hercules lifted up a five hundred pound set piece with one hand without a hassle. Samantha freaked and gestured franticly for him to put it down. Understanding, he made a look and placed it down as several assistants checked to see if it was a prop.

"I take it time-traveling mythicals isn't normal in your century?" He crossed his arms.

"Darren!" Larry entered with the client. "Monica Bradbury, owner of Bradbury Athletic Equipment."

"Mrs. Bradbury." Darren shook her hand. She was a very attractive blonde with heavenly hazel eyes and the body of an athlete. She smiled warmly as Darren introduced his wife. Hercules barely looked over and suddenly recognized her as someone else.

"Callisto?"

"Who?" She looked her new male spokes-model over.

"Harry!" Samantha knew the name of the goddess of hate by reputation only. She knew she was a former mortal overwhelmed by godhood who had battled Hercules in ancient times, but Monica Bradbury was not her. Maybe a very distant descendant, but not the hard to kill psychopath.

"An old flame." Samantha stepped in. "Right, Harry."

"Huh," Hercules looked over. "Oh, uh, right."

"Really," Monica beamed over her bronze god.

"Just think, Mrs. Bradbury." Larry continued with signs of a vast fortune in his mind. "Harry's appearance on your commercials and ads. The slogan: The guys only want a woman who knows the equipment to use. Bradbury Athletic Equipment."

"Still a little hokey, but could work." Monica blinked her eyes as she turned to Hercules. "How would you like to go for pizza?" She asked him.

"Pizza?"

"Harry is going home tonight." Samantha intervened. "All the way back to Greece."

"My family is from Greece!" Monica revealed as she spoke the language to Hercules. He listened to the modern language, but it sounded as if it was jumbled with mixed dialects from his temporal Achaean, Dorian and Spartan language base. He mustered the modern day dialect as best as he could, but he still felt he wasn't getting it correctly.

"Your tone is very much older." Monica spoke in Greek again. "It's more closer to Ionian. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were speaking Ancient Greek."

"My mother's village is still in the past." Hercules told the truth, but Monica accepted it as meaning his family was old-fashioned.

"Mrs. Bradbury," Larry continued. "If you like Harry, we can sign him to an exclusive contract keeping him from doing ads with any other company."

"That won't be necessary." Monica returned to English. "I'm not letting this big guy out of my sight! Come on, Harry, I haven't had a date with a nice guy in weeks!"

Hercules turned his head to Samantha and forced a tortured grin.

"Help me." He felt Callisto's descendant had the hots for him.

CHAPTER FOUR

"If she's not Callisto," Hercules returned to Samantha's house. "She ought to be." He crossed the modern day surroundings and folded his arms. "I am going home soon, right?"

"Right." Sam smiled as she turned to her Aunt Clara. The older witch snapped two fingers as she forgot the spell again and then thought of it. Darren came out of the kitchen right in front of her.

"What's happening?"

"Aunt Clara remembered the spell." Samantha grinned.

"Thank god." Darren spoke as Hercules felt insulted. "Oh, I meant that..."

"Don't worry about it." Hercules added as he heard the air seem to chime and sparkle around him.

"Fairy bells, sherry bees, " Clara looked whimsically amusing as she replied the words.

"Oh brother," Darren heard the bad rhymes.

"Hurry keys, Hurry climb." Clara looked briefly absolute as she incanted. "Return this man, back through time."

Nothing happened as Hercules heard the chiming fade.

"I'm not moving." He observed.

"Aunt Clara, try it again." Samantha implored.

"Oh, bottle tops and copper pots." Clara responded casually as popping sounds around Hercules reopened the time portal, wrapped around him and dropped him through the opening in space and time. Darren passed his arm through the dissipating smoke and rubbed his forehead.

"Sam," he begged. "Please no more time travelers."  
"Well..." she heard another bursting of noise of smoke and light from across space, but not time. Darren cowered behind his wife fearful of who was appearing and looked over the figure in his living room garbed in leather. Tall, muscular and bearing a goatee, he wore black leather and decorative arraignment with his snide disgusted sneer. Clara checked and rechecked her vision wondering whom she had plucked from the past this time.

"Okay, Samantha," Ares, the god of war, looked round. "Where is he? I know you plucked my brother from out of the past. I just got a double vibe from his presence."

"I just returned him, Ares…" Samantha stood unafraid.

"I need a drink." Darren rolled his eyes and cowered in fear from the unemployed god.

"Why did you do that?" Ares rolled his eyes, took the bottle of Scotch from the Stephens liquor cabinet and then leaned back to sit on the sofa. Propping his feet obnoxiously on the coffee table, he rolled his eyes briefly to Aunt Clara and recalled her vaguely as a teenager in the Fourteenth Century.

"My idiot brother…" Ares sipped the Scotch. "Well, the one native to this century, is now working and living as a stuntman in Hollywood under the name, get this, Kevin Sorbo." He made quotation marks with his fingers and sipped the mortal liquor again and remised he hadn't married Samantha when he had the chance. "It's worse than that Harry Cleese he used in the Nineteenth Century, wherever he got that…"

"Yeah," Samantha mugged to her husband. "Wherever did he get that?"

CHAPTER FIVE

It had once been a temple to Ares, but now it was damaged and ruined. Vishnu, the high god of the Devas had been captured and resticted to the wall to face these unholy actions. Iolaus's head had been forced to a chopping block where it was strapped down ready to be severed from his shoulders. Across from him, the Ares native to this time period had been forced down as well to another block by the demon lord's minions.

"If I was to die," Ares struggled against the demons. "I'd wish I was looking at another face."

"Oh yeah," Iolaus muttered. "Well, your face is not exactly a ray of sunshine!" Ravanna, the Hindu god of evil hovered over them both. His red face with its black eyes lowered down to Iolaus.

"For the last time, mortal," His voice vibrated with an unholy tone. "Where is the son of Zeus?"

"I don't know!"

"The death of the Zeus son was our ticket into Olympus." Kubera, the god of greed, was the demon lord's lieutenant. Resembling a fat man with white skin and black Hindu robes, he stared back with red eyes.

"The death of a god and a mortal," Ravanna grinned. "And we shall return Dahak to the world." He made the sign to his executioners. They raised their axes.

Another sound pervaded the defiled temple. It sounded like a long whistle as something fell from the sky. Hindu god and demon looked to the shattered roof as something came through it.

"Heads up!" Hercules spun and kicked the two executioners into different walls. Their axes hit ropes dropping chandeliers safely around Iolaus and Ares. Unharmed, the two straightened up and looked around with new hope.

"Where have you been!" Ares broke the shackle binding him from using his powers.

"Don't ask!" Hercules grabbed a beam and knocked the heads off several Rakshasas at once. He spun and protected Iolaus from Ravanna's blasts of black energy then looked up and noticed a four-armed figure staked to the wall upside down. It looked human except for his blue shin, but it was definitely alive.

"Who's the decoration!" Hercules knocked Kubera to his feet.

"Vishnu!" Iolaus fought for his life. "Ravanna's hated enemy."

"Really." Hercules watched Ares throwing lightning bolts. "Let's make a new friend! Move number thirty-seven!"

"Right!" Iolaus proved what made them such good friends and partners by ducking from another of Ravanna's deadly blasts. Hercules stepped on his back and grabbed a sword from a Rakshasas. He centered his blade on one of Vishnu's shackles and shattered it as the god of preservation broke free and landed on his feet below.

"Now, my hated enemy," Vishnu materialized swords in his four hands and then two extra arms with two more arms. "Let good conquer evil!"

"My will is stronger." The demon lord created his own weapons as the three-way battle continued. Ares was still throwing lightning against Kubera's deadly eye beams and Hercules and Iolaus were still holding their own against Rakshasas. Hercules tossed one of the Hindu demons into Kubera's vision as Ares blasted him with another arc of lightning.

"This is not worth it." Kubera waved his fat arms and vanished.

"Come back here you coward!" Ares vanished to fight him in his own realm.

"Kubera, you stupid half-brother!" Ravanna noticed his demon horde shattered into a mess of dismembered body parts across the ruined temple. He grinned his spiteful smile and stepped back from Vishnu, Heracles and the mortal known as Iolaus.

"I didn't want to rule this land anyway." He vanished in a burst of flame. In his absence, Vishnu lowered his weapons and stood unfaltering between the two Greek heroes.

PART SIX

"Wow, the future?" Iolaus grinned in impressed disbelief as he and Hercules traveled the road to Corinth to do a favor for his brother Iphicles. "What was it like? Was it all clean? Do people float in the air?"

"No…" Hercules continued walking. "It was different and the sky was dirtier, but for some reason I just wasn't comfortable. It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." They waved at a merchant pulling a small cart of fruits who tossed them back two apples for free. "It seemed that as far as they were ahead of us, they had lost a lot of basic human needs. It was… too civilized." Iolaus bit into his apple and tried to follow his train of thought.

"At least this war will bond the truce with the gods of the East." Hercules tossed away his apple core and wiped his lips. "Zeus doesn't even know that much about the gods beyond Old Sumeria, but with their cooperation, he'll open up new understanding between all the pantheons."

"Herc," Iolaus continued walking as he finished his apple. "Exactly how many pantheons are there out there? Are we going to get a culture shock every time some egotistical deity wants to lay siege to another?" He turned the curve in the road around the high grass and encountered company. Ares looked as if he had been sitting and waiting a while. Discord was leaning on a small pillar with a steel ring in it. A toss of her hair and she stood up straight with her bosom straining forward against her restrictive leather bodice.

"Two thousand years into the future?" Ares groused a bit. "That's not fair. With my powers, I can only muster a week, maybe a month… That's like so totally not fair."

"Please tell us you saw a lot of wars." Discord asked eagerly anticipating an answer she wanted to hear.

"Actually," Hercules glanced covertly to Iolaus and smirked amusingly. "What I saw was pretty peaceful." He glanced down into Discord's cleavage. "And they had things to control wardrobe malfunctions like that."

"I didn't want to hear that!" Ares roared.

"Well, this is like so totally unfair…" Discord paced a bit ignoring the Son of Zeus and his partner. "This wreaks, I mean, this rots… How can there not be wars? People still worship gods, right?" When Hercules didn't answer, she turned to Ares as he too worried the possible end of pagan worship.

"Naw…" They refused to believe that mortals would ever stop worshipping higher more power beings such as themselves.

END


End file.
